1. Technical Field
The present application relates to surgical instruments, and more particularly, to surgical clip appliers having a plurality of clips for applying the clips to body tissues and vessels during surgical procedures.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Surgical clip appliers are known in the art and have increased in popularity among surgeons by offering an alternative to conventional suturing of body tissues and vessels. Typical instruments are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,030,226 to Green et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,431,668 to Burbank III et al. These instruments generally provide a plurality of clips which are stored in the instrument and which are fed sequentially to the jaw mechanism at the distal end of the instrument upon opening and closing of the handles at the proximal end of the instrument. As the handles are closed, the jaws close to deform a clip positioned between the jaw members, and as the jaws are opened to release the deformed clip, a new clip is fed from the series to a position between the jaws. This process is repeated until all the clips in the series of clips have been used.
Many of these surgical clip appliers are relatively expensive to manufacture, purchase and/or operate. Thus, there is a desire by manufactures and end users to develop surgical clip appliers that are relatively inexpensive to manufacture, purchase and/or operate.
Additionally, many of these surgical clip appliers are operated by hand and the relative forces required to fire these surgical clip applier may be great.
Accordingly, a need exists for surgical clip appliers that are relatively economical to develop and manufacture, as well as requiring a relatively smaller firing force.